Legal Commentary

Hi Everyone.  Thanks to Dan and the rest of the Prawfs for inviting me back for another guest stint here.  I did a previous stint in April of ?07, as I was finishing my Climenko Fellowship at Harvard.  I?m now quite settled here at Arizona State, having started my second year of teaching.  For those of you who are just starting your first year, hang in there --- it really *is* much easier to balance teaching and everything else we are supposed to be doing the second time around.

It wouldn?t be fall if Prawfs weren?t giving advice to the big group of people who are hoping to land a law teaching job for next year.  I read the blog religiously, both when I was applying for my fellowship and when I was on the entry-level market, and I think that the advice is generally sound.  There is, however, one area where the advice here on Prawfs has been mixed: whether candidates should send a ?target letter? or some packet of information to hiring chairs.

I ended up sending approximately 30 of these letters (a cover letter expressing interest in the school, a CV, and a short research agenda) when I went on the market, questioning whether hiring chairs read them.  The answer, unsurprisingly, is that it depends on the school and who is chair of the appointments committee.  But especially for those candidates who are interested in schools outside of the northeast or in schools that aren?t at the top of the US News rankings, I strongly recommend that they send target letters to those schools.  Having had the chance to talk to members of appointments committees at various schools, I was surprised to learn how many schools (a) use whether they received a target letter as a tie-break between various candidates, or (b) won?t even look at candidates that haven?t sent such letters.

Best of luck to all of you on the market!